Ken,

What we can see when it's attributed to Mr. Eric Rudder that "He was a key guy in building FoxPro and, more important, in creating an incredibly rabid community of [FoxPro] developers...", is that one of the greatest FoxPro's strengths comes from its community, that is ever ready to help their fellows and to act whenever needed to push FoxPro to the place we think it deserves. Nothing new in that, though.

But good will and individual efforts must be coordinated (IMO), in order to achieve what we all want (have FoxPro as widespread as possible, and being recognized as a great tool), to use our community's energy consistently.

We use to ask Microsoft for things we think you should do, and at the same time we try to do things by ourselves, to push FoxPro, but what else we jointly (Microsoft and the FoxPro community) could do?

In the USA we have a different picture from that found in Brazil and perhaps in some other countries where FoxPro is not so well known, due to many reasons that need not to be enumerated here. If we (the foreign FoxPro communities) could know what Microsoft subsidiaries, in our countries, think and would like to ask from us, we could joint our efforts and work better coordinated. If that is one thing Microsoft finds it is worthy and would like to do, of course.

Think that if some directions could be given to us, we'd be able to tell more about our local (specific) needs and perceptions, discuss suggestions and work together much more efficiently.

Just wanted to add my bit of help.

Fernando